CAN E-CHEATING BE PREVENTED? AN APPROACH TO DETECT PLAGIARISM IN COMPUTER SKILLS COURSES

摘要

Articles in the public media, as well as academic journals have reported disturbing research findings aboutrnthe cheating behavior of students. For faculty that teach in the area of information systems, the news regardingrncheating is even more sobering, as studies indicate that cheating is most likely to occur in the disciplines ofrnbusiness, engineering and science (McCabe and Trevino 1996; Newstead et al. 1996). The objective of thisrnmanuscript is to describe an approach that we implemented in our information systems program to deal withrnthe challenge of detecting plagiarism in student work involving computer skills. Specifically, we discuss arnsoftware program that was developed to detect plagiarism in spreadsheet and database exam assignments.rnWe also offer an illustration of how the approach is used in practice and provide an assessment of ourrnexperiences with the approach.